Mary Helen Specht was born and raised in Abilene, Texas, to parents Alice and Joe, both librarians.
She has a B.A. in literature from Rice University in Houston and an M.F.A. in fiction from Emerson College in Boston. After returning from a Fulbright grant to Nigeria, she was named a Dobie Paisano Fellow by the Texas Institute of Letters and the University of Texas in Austin.
Mary has also lived and worked in Santiago, Chile; Quito, Ecuador; and Austin, Texas, where she presently teaches at Austin Community College and University of Texas Extension. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in numerous journals and literary magazines, and she is currently finishing a Texas-themed short story collection as well as a creative nonfiction book on Nigeria.
She is an only child who likes to eat salty pie crust dough.
